Sunday, February 19, 2012

Looking over several of these other posts and the suggestions of having oral readings of stories or poems available made me think of a particularly awesome podcast, Risk, in which every episode is a compilation of stories people told at various live events. They range from hilarious to troubling, but always it is very compelling tom listen to.

Does a recording of a story, told live, not from a pre-written text, said exactly as if they were saying it to you in person over a beer, count as art/literature?
It's a very immediate sort of nonfiction, but I think if done right it can be considered to be art. Naturally, we all know people who are lousy at telling stories—they get sidetracked, spend time on boring or irrelevant details, repeat themselves, etc. and that's not the kind of "personal storytelling" I'm talking about.

Though you get into hairy territory if you declare that something isn't art just because it isn't GOOD art (thinking of the Twilight conversation from in class).

4 comments:

  1. More and more, I think our desire to define "good" and "bad" art stems from a need to make sure we have a manageable amount of art (literature) to analyze, or consume.

    I sometimes find it helpful to think of storytelling as a craft--it's something you can practice and hone until the delivery is perfect.

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    1. The good/bad art debate is fascinating. I think it is in our DNA to try to break things up into categories, into binaries. Maybe that's why the good/bad divide consumes us so.

      Also, I hope we encourage some folks to read their work. It'd be great!

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  2. Definitely, I agree there is a human proclivity to divide anything and everything up into taxonomies. So much of art, literature, and other media (and non-media too) are subjectively valued in the eye of the beholder. Keep in mind, that all media is constructed and often constructed to make some kind of meaning for an intended audience or intended audiences. Such audiences and individuals will create their own meanings of media—differently—not necessarily “good” or “bad”—but differently. For example, I was a young teen when the film Titanic came out, and being a romantic youth at the time, the sentimental love story between the leading characters was meaningful for me, but for others (older movie goers) it was the historical portrayal of the lives lost on the Titanic that created meaning for them as they may have grown up with the personal stories of older loved ones who lost or almost lost a family member or friend on the Titanic.

    “Good” and “bad” taxonomies are problematic because they try to be too objective, and meaning making is anything but objective, even in science. What I mean by this—is that scientific discourse (not necessarily science itself) is like the media and other literary forms—it is socially constructed.

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  3. I am an Android fanactic and I've been told that PodCasts are for ipod and other "i" technologies. How can I get them without owning that tech?

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